Web design help & software

[x-ray]

It's about time I made use of the free web space my ISP supplies, I want to build my own web site and was wondering if anyone could suggest the following:

</font><ul type="square">[*]<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">The best software (Dreamweaver, Frontpage etc) </font>[*]<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Any good books for someone who is computer literate, but new to web design (no HTML knowledge) </font>[*]<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Any good sources of info on the net ? </font>[/list]<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Thanks in advance
x-ray

 

[Artie Choke]

check out these sites:

http://werbach.com/barebones/
http://www.webreference.com/
http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html

btw: front page isn't too bad, but it has an annoying "feature" which loads an entire web site into memory and relinks everything - whether you want it to or not - doh! if you just want to edit a single page - it won't oblige. ms word can be used, but it adds a lot of overhead.

 

[Saaby]

I use Dreamweaver MX at school and find it to be a supurb program...I'd link my website here (It'll be in my sig eventually) but the school network is having major issues (what else is new) and blah blah blah...

When I do stuff at home it ain't fancy but you know what it is? Pure HTML

My home editor is notepad! NO download necessary--it's already built into windows.

 

[Rothrandir]

http://www.davesite.com/webstation/html/

this site is quite helpful.

i use "Jimbo's HTML Editor" for all of my html purposes. primarily because i made the proggy myself with delphi (anybody else use delphi?) "Jimbo's HTML Editor" is pretty much like notepad without the extra garbage, and it automatically saves and opens in the .html format. i am currently working on hotkeys and a buttons on the screen to click when you want to insert a tag. i am considering an integrated web browser also, how does that sound, do it, don't dot it? thanks.

 

[CNC Dan]

Originally posted by Saaby:
I use Dreamweaver MX at school and find it to be a supurb program...I'd link my website here (It'll be in my sig eventually) but the school network is having major issues (what else is new) and blah blah blah...

When I do stuff at home it ain't fancy but you know what it is? Pure HTML

My home editor is notepad! NO download necessary--it's already built into windows.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Thank god someone still does. I cant stand all the stupid stuff that web editors put in there.

most of the 'editing' that I do is stripping out all the crap from peoples web pages.

 

[Tree]

I use 1st page for most of my editing. It's free. I like Dreamweaver MX also. As you can see from my page I'm just a beginner.

 

[SFR]

You can go to www.download.com and download demos of web authoring software and tutorials before you start spending ca$h.

 

[x-ray]

Thanks Artie Choke & SFR, I'll give them a try

 

[e=mc²]

I personally use Draamweaver 4 and it will allow you to edit just a single page rather than an entire website like front page seems to force you to do. I also use it to manage my sites as it can check for broken links and the like. And if want it to employ layers, something rather tedious with a text editor, then it excels. Just my 2¢...

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[Chris M.]

I am also one of those who does it by hand, but only ever by hand. I`ve never used HTML editors and don`t really want to. All my web sites are hand crafted.

OK so it isn`t the easiest way especially for web design newbies, but once you`ve learned (at least basic) HTML you can create decent, simple, cross-browser-friendly pages quickly and easilly, wherever you are.

A few of my rules I try to stick to- may or may not be useful to anyone hand-making their own pages?
- Always specify a Font style (and never Times- yech!), color and size.
- Always specify Body background colour, and hyperlink colours. Not everyone uses Windows default colour settings!
- Always specify Image Height and Width, and ALT if relevent.
- Never use Image Height and Width tags to resize a picture- especially to shrink one. The viewer still has to download the whole image to view it, which defeats one of the purposes of shrinking an image (smaller file = faster download).
- Never use excessive scrolling or side-to-side bouncing text, it`s got to be the most annoying effect there is.

- And always try to make it simple and obvious to navigate. I hate web sites with impossible one-way systems that you get lost in trying to find where you`re going to.

 

[KC2IXE]

Best web design software?

Seriously?

A GOOD Text Editor! LEARN HTML/XML/CSS/XSLT (they are all related)

Get the Book "HTML for the World Wide Web" (Elizabeth Castro - Pub by Peachpit Press), and have at it - your code will be much better than what is put out by 90% of the crap out there for not much more work

 

[e=mc²]

At work, that is all we are allowed to use, a text editor. I do like the level of control that you have hand coding all the HTML tags yourself. I agree that the HTML editors out there place too many meta tags and other non-essential crap on your html documents. We us an "enhanced" text editor in that it will show mismatched tags, especially useful when writing XSLT style sheets. In XML/XSL, you MUST close every single tag, even though you normally wouldn't in html, eg, the break tag <br>. It also comes in handy when coding in Java or JavaScript, because it will show mismatched braces and brackets, handy when writing nested loops.

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